The Lancers, ranked second in CIF-Southern Section Division 4, remained unbeaten at 7-0 in league and 13-7 overall.

Amat, the defending Division 4 champion that is playing with only one senior in the lineup, lost Ruiz, last year’s CIF Player of the Year, to season-ending surgery.

“We’re playing with one returning varsity player now, so we’re a bunch of new guys,” Nieto added.

Zamora scattered eight hits over his six innings and picked up his fifth victory of the season against two losses.

“It’s nice to be undefeated in league and it’s awesome coming out with all these runs, and our bats are starting to come alive,” Zamora said.

The 6-7-8-9 hitters for Amat accounted for eight of the runs, but five St. Paul miscues led to five of those scores.

St. Paul (10-12, 4-3), which finished third in its own tournament last week, jumped out to a 1-0 first inning lead as leadoff hitter Kevin Romo (2for4) singled, was sacrificed to second, stole third and was singled home by designated hitter Cristian Garcia (2 for 3). Junior right fielder Aaron Pinto was left stranded at third as Zamora (4 strikeouts) fanned the final two batters.

That was it for the Swordsmen, as they left seven runners on base.

Senior Jorge Zepeda had two hits for the Swordsmen.

“We had hits scattered throughout, but we weren’t able to put them together,” St.Paul coach Casey Morales said. “We had a lot of table-setters, but nobody cleared the table.”

St. Paul left a second runner in scoring position in the top of the second, but the Lancers took advantage of two Swordsmen errors in the bottom half of the inning and scored four runs on four hits off starter Jared Paderez (5-4).

After the first two runs scored on errors, Amat third baseman Michael Hernandez (two RBIs, run, sacrifice fly) singled in the third run and leadoff hitter Scott Hurst (two RBIs, run scored, walk), grounded out to second, scoring Bryan Menendez (2 for 2, 2 runs, double, RBI) to take a 4-1 lead.

Paderez allowed only one earned run in the inning.

“We’ve been playing some real good defense and those back-to-back errors opened up that inning and things got away,” Morales said.

Bishop Amat scored twice more in the fourth inning on a run-scoring double by Menendez and a sacrifice fly by Hernandez to lead 6-1.

The Lancers then exploded for six more runs in the sixth inning . The inning was highlighted by a three-run triple to right field by designated hitter Andrew Dela Cruz.

Evan Claproth and Andrew Medina each had two hits for the Lancers.

The two teams will meet again on Friday at St. Paul for their last meeting of the season.

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